What’s in the Belize 2023 Poll Survey
Trygve Olson
The principal of Viking Strategies also spoke about the survey and the various responses from persons who participated in the exercise. He shared a few findings that stood out from the survey.
Trygve Olson, Principal, Viking Strategies
“The first thing that jumped out is, the survey was interesting because Belizeans more so than in previous ones, their personal economic situations seem to be better and I will show you some questions that we asked that are asked around the world by Gallop and I used them around the world. Relative poverty, it‘s quite frankly the best that Belizeans have felt about their ability to afford things since 2010. So that‘s interesting but there‘s this discrepancy that‘s going on between how voters are perceiving the relative situation versus things like the cost of living which are impacting them. So they don‘t necessarily, they feel like they are doing better but they don‘t have confidence in the economy as a whole and we‘re going to talk a lot about the cost of living and what a challenge that currently is for Belizeans. Second thing is, it‘s really clear, and I don‘t know how much of this is as a result of the pandemic and tourism kind of stopping, but there is an understanding of the significant role that tourism plays in Belize and how important it is for the nation‘s economy and individual prosperity. They have very specific views on the kind of tourism that they think should be emphasized. They have very specific views on sort of the points of emphasis, although there tends to be more diversion on this, whether it should be ecological tourism or medical tourism or beach tourism. There‘s some real opinions among Belizeans about that and it really creates, I think, and we‘ll talk about this, the need for a cohesive strategy maybe by a lot of sectors in Belize to say, alright this is how we‘re going to sell ourselves.”
We’ll have a detailed analysis of the findings of the Belize 2023 Polling Survey in our Thursday newscast.
